With his playing days finished
prematurely, Tilger became a student assistant coach at Lafayette and thought
seriously about working toward a head coaching job at the college level.

To earn the master’s degree many schools
require for those jobs, Tilger studied sports management at Springfield (Mass.)
College, where he was a graduate assistant. He completed an internship for the
Philadelphia 76ers, and the connections he made in the NBA led to a job as
regional marketing manager for the Harlem Globetrotters, covering 38 cities
annually over three years.

Greatest disappointment: Missing my senior year of college football due to injury

Fantasy job: Movie critic

Executive you most admire: Ed Snider, Peter Luukko

Business advice: Hire good people and provide them with the resources to do their job.

“Baptism by fire,” Tilger said,
describing the frenetic pace of selling tickets, keeping the books and
marketing the Trotters.

He
kept in touch with his friends in Philly, and in 1998 Tilger was hired as
marketing director at Wachovia Center. He moved quickly up the ladder, becoming
the arena’s vice president of marketing in 2000 before moving to the Flyers in
the same position from 2002 to 2004.

Tilger does a great job of developing
successful marketing programs to support the ticket sales staff, said Peter
Luukko, president and chief operating officer of Comcast-Spectacor, which owns
the Flyers and the arena. Too often in sports, there’s a breakdown in
communication between the two departments, Luukko said.

For
example, Tilger, now in his seventh season as the Flyers’ senior vice president
of business operations, has been instrumental in developing the Flyers Ticket
Marketplace on the team’s Web site, where more than 80 percent of the team’s
season-ticket holders share tickets.

Most recently, he was primarily
responsible for the Flyers’ generating $400,000 in gross income from the recent
NHL Winter Classic in Boston.

Tilger developed travel packages to
Beantown for fans attending the game and special events at the South Philly
Sports Complex tied to the Winter Classic, where fans could pick up their
tickets and buy special-edition merchandise. Not bad for a road team.